Australian Baroque Brass

Friday, 24 September at 8pm

Anna Sandstrom (soprano), Darryl Poulsen (natural horn, Vienna horn),
Melissa Farrow, Mikaela Oberg (classical flutes), John Foster, Joshua Clarke, Leanne Sullivan, Matthew Manchester, Yoram Levy (natural trumpets),
Neal Peres da Costa (fortepiano), Brian Nixon (timpani)

Personnel subject to change

Programme

NEUKOMM – Three processional fanfares

MOZART – Divertimento in C for flutes, trumpets and timpani, K 188

MOZART – Aria: Lungi da te, mio bene from Mitridate, K 87

BEETHOVEN – Sonata in F for horn and fortepiano, op 17

MOZART – Divertimento in D for flutes, trumpets and timpani, K 187

LEOPOLD MOZART – Trombone concerto in G (arranged for trombone and keyboard)

MOZART – Horn concerto in D, K 412/K 514 (arranged for horn and keyboard)

SCHUBERT – Song: Auf dem Strom

About the artists

Founded in 2003, Australian Baroque Brass is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence on authentic or period instruments. The group is populated by the finest period instrumentalists, many of its members holding key positions in Australian and international orchestras. This dynamic ensemble performs a vast repertoire of European music from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It plays in formats ranging from duo to orchestral.

Programme Notes

NEUKOMM – Three processional fanfares in E flat for four trumpets and timpani

Maestoso / Moderato / Allegro

Sigismund Ritter von Newcomm was born in Salzburg in 1778, the year Mozart wrote, among other things, his three last symphonies. Newcomm was a composer, pianist and scholar who had studied with both Michael and Josef Haydn. He was a great admirer of Mozart and, at the unveiling of the Mozart monument in Salzburg in 1842, delivered the laudatory discourse and conducted Mozart's Coronation mass and his Requiem.

From 1809, Neukomm lived in Paris. On the occasion of the first performance of his requiem in C minor at the Vienna Congress in 1815, he was made un Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. Neukomm travelled very widely. His Trois fanfares, par le Chevalier Sigismond Newcomm were written in 1833 on board a ship between Genova and Marseille. They were conceived for the E-flat trumpets of the French military bands. The timpani part used in tonight's performance was added by Edward Tarr.

Edward Tarr writes that the fanfares all have an A-A-B-B form, and describes the maestoso as “a pompous tutti”, the moderato as having “one or two solo trumpets over an insistent, pointillistic bass” and the “brisk, concise” allegro as one in which “the trumpeters enter successively”.

MOZART – Divertimento in C for flutes, trumpets and timpani, K 188

Andante / Allegro / Menuetto / Andante / Menuetto / (Gavotte)

According to Neil Zaslaw, Wolfgang Mozart and his father, Leopold, arranged a suite of Viennese ballets by Joseph Starzer and Christoph Willibald Gluck for flutes, trumpets and timpani, and this resulted in Mozart’s original divertimento in C for the same combination.

The first slow movement provides a stately opening for the work. The allegro, which follows, is a miniature sonata movement. Neil Zaslaw writes that the “third and fifth movements, old-fashioned minuets without trios, frame an Andante in which Alberti-bass figurations from the flutes give the effect of an enlarged hurdy-gurdi, with a giant organ-grinder turning the crank”. The finale is a short, brilliantly orchestrated, gavotte.

MOZART – Aria: Lungi da te, mio bene from Mitridate, K 87

Mozart’s early three-act opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto, is set around the Crimean port of Nymphæum during the conflict between Rome and Pontus in 63BCE. Mitridate, who is falsely thought to be dead, has two sons, Farnace and Sifare, and a fiancée, Aspasia.

In Act 2, Farnace makes advances on Aspasia, who is protected from him by his forceful brother. After a number of intrigues, Mitridate asks Aspasia for immediate marriage, but she hesitates. Aspasia confesses her love to Sifare but they both agree to part to save their honour. In this aria, Sifare sings to Aspasia about their parting.

BEETHOVEN – Sonata in F for horn and piano, op 17

Allegro moderato / Poco adagio, quasi andante / Rondo: Allegro moderato

Beethoven’s op 17 sonata was written in 1800. and dedicated to Baroness Josefine von Braun. It was published in Vienna in 1801.

There is a story that the composer began work on this sonata on the day prior to the performance. Beethoven himself premiered the work with the horn virtuoso, Giovanni Punto (whose real name was Jan Vaclav Stich), who had inspired its composition and had the reputation of being the greatest horn player of his day. If the ‘day before’ story be true, the performers would have been hard pressed to be fully prepared for the work’s first public presentation.

The work is light and fairly uncomplicated. It is expressive and its moods are generally cheerful. Both the horn and piano parts are quite difficult, and it seems likely that Beethoven wrote this showpiece for his favorite horn player and himself. The first movement features attractive, if not particularly memorable, music. The rather ponderous slow movement is followed by the rondo finale, in which the horn part is colorful and the piano part is imaginative.

MOZART – Divertimento in D for flutes, trumpets and timpani, K 187

The divertimento in D, K 187, is a copy of a work by Josef Starzer followed by an arrangement by Mozart of the gavotte from Gluck’s Paride ed Elena, an opera first performed in 1770. The trumpets are divided into different tunings: three are in C and two in D. There are ten sections in this work. This work was probably composed after K 188. It is likely that both divertimenti were written to accompany processions.

Abert writes that “in the main, the flutes are entrusted with the melodic line, with the trumpets serving to accompany them and, more especially, to add a certain colour”.

Edward Tarr writes that because the trumpets are in two different tunings, “they can integrate their pitches more successfully with those of the flutes over the timapni’s base lines than would have been possible with a single tuning […]. Performance is tricky, for the trumpets’ melodies (and harmonies) often pass back and forth in the middle of a motif from the C to the D instruments, or from a trumpet to a flute, and vice versa”.

LEOPOLD MOZART – Trombone concerto in G (Trombone and keyboard reduction)

Adagio / Menuetto / Allegro

Leopold Mozart (1719 - 1787) was the son of an Augsburg bookseller. While a student in Augsburg, he became a skilled violinist and organist and also developed an interest in optical instruments. At the age of 19, he moved to Salzburg where he studied philosophy and jurisprudence at the Benedictine University and graduated as a Bachelor of Philosophy. He became a distinguished violin teacher, and left university to join the musical establishment of the Archbishop of Salzburg, in whose service he rose to become (and remain) court composer and deputy Kapellmeister.

In 1760, at the age of 41, he ended his career to concentrate on the well-being of his famous son, Wolfgang. Before the birth of his son, however, Leopold was becoming a composer of considerable merit. He also published a learned book on violin playing and technique, Grundliche Violinschule, known in English as “The Art of the Violin”. His first musical work was his Sonate sei da chiesa e da camera, a set of trio sonatas. His output included many symphonies, concerti, serenades, divertimenti and oratorios. Leopold used special effects in some of his compositions: his Sinfonia da Caccia (Hunt symphony) for four horns and strings calls for shouting, barking dogs and shotguns, and his Bauernhochzeit (Peasant Wedding) includes bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, a dulcimer, whoops and whistles, and pistol shots. Leopold's Cassation in G for Orchestra and Toys (Toy Symphony), once attributed to Joseph Haydn, remains popular, and a number of symphonies, concerti and other works also survive, including this trombone concerto in G.

There is nothing really remarkable about this pleasant concerto. Its opening adagio and the following menuetto last about one minute each, and the final allegro is of about two minutes’ duration.

MOZART – Horn concerto in D, K 412/K 514 (Horn and keyboard reduction)

Allegro / Rondo: Allegro

Of Mozart’s four horn concerti, written for his friend and fellow Freemason, Jopseph Leutgeb, this two-movement one is the shortest and the last. The original scoring is for solo horn, two oboes, two bassoons and strings. The first movement was completed (after nearly three years) in 1791, the year of Mozart’s death. In the original manuscript, the rondo movement exists only as a full-length sketch for the horn and string parts in which the the horn part is marked adagio and is adorned by various insults (in Latin) to the horn player. It is not known whether Mozart intended to add a slow movement. There is a second manuscript in the hand of Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who fleshed-out the sketch for the finale. This manuscript, dated 6 April 1792 (Easter), is listed by Köchel as K 514.

Of the first movement, Roger Hellyer writes that it “begins quietly with an enchanting lyrical melody […] but when the soloist turns to the second subject, he rejects out of hand the orchestra’s suggestion and invents a delightfully happy idea of his own”. The rondo is in three sections and, in addition to the written insults, each contains a jest of some sort. The first ends with a short passage of canon. In the second, Süssmayr introduces for the horn, in a foreign key, a plainsong theme from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, normally sung as part of the Good Friday service. And Mozart (Süssmayr?) lets the violin accompany the horn, unison – a pleasing effect but, with the long notes and understated lyricism of the theme, hardly suited to a rondo.

SCHUBERT – Song for soprano, horn and piano,
Auf dem Strom (On the River), D 943

Schubert wrote his song, Auf dem Strom, in the last year of his life. It is based on the words of Ludwig Rellstab, a German poet and music critic whose father was a music publisher and composer. The song was a work composed for a concert of his own music given on 26 March 1828 – the first anniversary of Beethoven’s death.

It is, in fact, a farewell song. The singer, being carried away by a boat on the tumultuous river, is farewelling his beloved, who is left on the bank. The powerful, expansive, phrases of the obbligato horn perhaps represent the grandeur of the river. The singer ends with the hope that they may some day be reunited.